The Duke Rape Case You Haven't Heard About

February 15th, 2007 10:54 PM

You probably haven't heard anything about it, but there was another allegation of interracial rape at Duke University recently. That it's the racial mirror image of the ridiculous lacross rape is probably the reason why.

Mary Katharine Ham has the details:

There's another accusation of rape floating around Durham this week. The accuser was allegedly attacked at a house party this Saturday.

The accuser is white. The suspect is black.

Heard anything about that? Yeah, I didn't think so.

The mainstream media has bent over backward to keep race out of this. Even those who first gave a description of the alleged rapist as a “black man” later redacted that from their reports. The News & Observer never printed it at all. And none has pointed out, as the Duke Chronicle has done, that the alleged victim was white, making this a mirror image of the Duke lacrosse case.

Some maintained all along last spring that their protests were not about race but about men’s violence against women. Still others tried to fan racial and class tensions by saying that if these were black men accused of raping a white woman, the man would be in jail. Well, now we know two things: it was always about race for the pot bangers and the Group of 88 professors at Duke, and it is demonstrably true, after Sunday’s incident, that a black man can be accused of raping a white woman and still be on the street.

It was never about protecting women. I know that because I live in a neighborhood that has the dubious honor of being the namesake of at least one serial rapist. There were few candlelight vigils; there was no national media attention; there were no pot-bangers when the women of my neighborhood couldn't take their dogs for walks at dusk. And, those black-on-white rapes just didn't bring the activist out in people the way the Duke non-rape did.

Read the whole post.